The user of the Portable Device accesses the Internet and World Wide Web, being said access performed using a communication network and always through a Proxy server. On a typical navigation session, the user calls up a browser software on the Portable Device with the intention of navigating to a certain webpage. Said application is in fact running in the Proxy server, which is connected to both the Portable Device and the Web Server.
The display screen of the Portable Device is smaller than that of a typical desktop computer, and the webpage lay-out is normally designed to fit said typical desktop computer screen. Therefore, in order to view the whole area of the webpage the user of the Portable Device has to use the scroll function.
The image of each webpage is sent from the Web server to the Proxy server through the network, typically broken down in frames. The frames are compressed separately by the Proxy server and sent over the network to the Portable Device. Upon selecting which frames of the webpage image are to be transmitted first, the Proxy server gives priority to those frames that make up the graphic area currently being displayed on the Portable Device screen, followed by those frames in the neighboring perimeter of said area. If the user starts to scroll towards a different area of the webpage image, the Proxy server starts to send the frames for the targeted area. If the user suddenly scrolls far away (down, for instance) even before the current screen of the Portable Device has finished loading on the Portable Device screen, the Proxy server starts transmission of frames giving priority to those frames that make up the graphic area newly addressed, followed by those frames in the neighboring perimeter of said area.
Every time the Portable Device receives a frame from the Proxy server, said frame is overlaid on the Portable Device screen at the specific display coordinates and replaces whatever content was there.
In the state of the art, there is an interval between the moment in which the user of the Portable Device clicks or types instructions to access a new webpage and the moment the image of said webpage is actually displayed on the Portable Device screen. Usually, during the first 2 to 10 seconds (and sometimes up to 40 seconds) the Proxy server is still receiving and/or processing the information received from the Web server, either because the Web server is slow or the network is congested between the Web server and the Proxy server. During this initial period it is said that the image of the accessed webpage is in flux state, in the sense that its content has not yet stabilized into the image it will eventually have. The Proxy server waits for the webpage content to settle down before it freezes the image, takes a snapshot of said image, divides said image into frames and starts transmitting said frames to the Portable Device for display to the user. The criterion used by the Proxy server to establish that the webpage has settled down is to wait from a signal from the browser software that all data has been received and the webpage is completely loaded. According to the state of the art, once said signal is received the Proxy server waits for a few seconds more and then the browser is frozen and kept from running, so in the Proxy server there is no further updating of the image. This last updated image is transmitted to the Portable Device.
The inconvenience of the state of the art is that the flux period of approximately 80% of the webpages lasts for about 6 to 7 seconds, during which the user of the Portable Device is waiting and the transmission has not even started yet. The level of anxiety of the user is considerable, especially considering that sometimes the user has to wait for the page to load only to find out that further navigation is required to reach the webpage the user ultimately desires to access.
Accordingly, there is a need in the current art for shortening the period during which the user of the Portable Device is left to wait for the loading of the webpage image on the device screen, which is part of the overall time required to navigate the web using a Portable Device as described above.